1. Technical Field
The present application relates generally to the field of power field effect transistors and, in particular, to the field of silicon carbide junction field effect transistors for power switching applications.
2. Background of the Technology
Silicon carbide junction field effect transistors (JFETs) are well suited for high voltage and high power switching applications such as DC-to-DC converters. Vertical SiC JFETs are an attractive alternative to SiC MOSFETs at this time due to low inversion channel layer mobility and poor high temperature, high field reliability [1]. MOSFETs also have an inherent built in body diode that adds parasitic capacitance, which in turn leads to increased switching losses. However, this built in anti-parallel, p-n diode is useful in circuits where an antiparallel freewheeling diode is required. Having the diode built in to the switch eliminates stray inductances caused from the bonding required to connect the source of the switch to the anode of a discrete diode [2]. The downside, again, is that this diode is a p-n diode that has a large amount of stored charge that has to be removed when the diode goes from forward to reverse bias. Removing this stored charge adds to the total switching time and reduces the operating frequency of the circuit. Schottky diodes do not have the stored charge problem and can be switched much faster than p-n diodes.
Others have proposed integrating an SBD (Schottky barrier diode) with MOSFETs [2, 3] and bipolar Junction transistors [4]. FETs with lateral gates incorporating an SBD on a shared drift region have also been proposed [5] while others have proposed incorporating an SBD with a vertical JFET having buried parallel gates fabricated on III-V semiconductors [6].
There still exists a need, however, for a switching device that has the benefits of a MOSFETs body diode without the losses associated with switching a built-in p-n diode.